A באָרוועסר פּראָפעסאָר with 3 boys and a vagabond life

To freshmen, I am ancient: proof

Earlier this week, I screened the 1927 film, Old San Francisco for my seminar. In class this morning, I asked my students if they recognized any of the actors. My students figured out (likely by way of imdb) that the Swedish actor, Warner Oland, playing evil Chinese Chris Buckwell, was the same actor who played the rigidly Orthodox cantor in The Jazz Singer, which came out a month later (we watched that film, too). But no one recognized Dolores Costello, who plays the beautiful and chaste Dolores Vasquez, set up by the film as the rightful proprietress of Californian lands, by virtue of being descended from Spanish Conquistadors (the film brilliantly elides San Francisco’s history as part of Mexico, casting Dolores as a pureblood European, and a contrast to the other sketchy ethnic types who try to take possession of her rancho and the rest of the city–only to be crushed by the 1906 earthquake).

OK, I didn’t actually expect them to recognize her (even if she was the Goddess of the Silent Screen), but I wanted to see if anyone noticed a family resemblance to another actress.

I gave them a few facts about Dolores Costello: “She was the daughter of actors.”

“She was married to an actor.”

“She was the mother of an actor.”

“She was the grandmother of an actress — who is still acting today. Can anyone guess who that actress today is?”

Nothing.

Then: “She’s about my age. And she was a child actress. I am willing to bet everyone has seen, if not some of her recent romantic comedies, one of the films she did as a kid. It was a very famous movie. I saw it as a kid when it was out in the theater, but it’s a classic. You would have seen it.”

One student confirmed: “She was a kid when you were a kid?”

Me: “Yes.”

Silence while they all thought and thought (and held their googling fingers back).

I didn’t break the silence. I waited. And finally, the student who clarified the actress’s contemporaneity with me, piped up with a knowing response: